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Posts Tagged ‘Search Engine Optimization’

Ethos is a general contracting agency based out of Denver, Colorado. Founded on the belief that homeowners should not have to go searching for a quality contractor, Ethos has built their brand of local, reliable, high-quality service within their loyal customer base. It was this message that they wanted to share with a wider consumer base. So they came to FiG.

Understanding The Audience

With two primary locations in Denver and Fort Collins and contracting licenses that authorize them to work from Colorado Springs to Cheyenne, there is a large pool of potential clients to be reached with effective marketing techniques. The first step was to determine how we were going to reach these homeowners who need contracting services now or in the future – What platforms are they using? What information are they looking for?

Enhancing The Digital Presence

Ethos had solid building blocks making up their digital presence with an active blog and Facebook page, as well as a robust keyword profile. With an integrated strategy, we will be able to improve the performance across all channels, reaching the target audience.

Social Media

There are a variety of factors when it comes to home improvement that plays a role in deciding on a contractor – from the size of a project to the cause of the damage. By generating content that proves expertise in the industry and building an active social presence that facilitates consumer engagement, we can establish a relationship with current and potential clients. Increasing brand awareness in this way will keep the Ethos name top-of-mind for when a weather disaster strikes or a home improvement project comes up.

Blogging

The Ethos blog was already providing consistent, informative content. By taking over the blogging, we are able to target keywords to improve the rankings for a variety of search queries. Data-driven topic selection will increase the amount of incoming traffic to the site by keeping fresh content that is optimized for current, relevant events and trends.

Search Engine Marketing

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

The current website already has plenty of highly specific pages, so we will be making some slight enhancements to the content for targeted SEO purposes. Building out the content will help provide information for prospective clients, as well as improve rankings in search engine results pages.

Pay-Per-Click Marketing (PPC)

To round out our digital marketing efforts for Ethos, we will be instituting a PPC campaign that targets ideal keywords. This paid tactic will jumpstart incoming traffic, establishing a wider brand awareness.

We are so excited to be working with Ethos General Contractors to enhance their digital marketing. Our expertise will help convert traffic, increase sales, and improve overall brand awareness.

Voice-activated technology has become a staple in our cell phones, our laptops, and our vehicles. It is changing the way we set our alarms, make phone calls and find information. From Siri on the iPhone to Alexa for Amazon, voice-activated “assistants” are a new way that consumers are getting things done.

A study done by Thrive Analytics shows that even the boomer generation is onboard with voice-activated tools, a consumer category that other technological advancements have failed to penetrate. It makes sense – the quick press of a button to search for something, just as you would ask a friend, is easy.

As the technology has evolved, making voice commands more and more accurate, we have also seen the search queries evolve. Rather than fragmented thoughts that are common when typed into a search-engine, people are using complete phrases that are more natural to human language.

Google’s Director of Conversational Search, Behshad Behzadi, says that the future of search is to be able to provide the ultimate digital assistant that can help people in their day-to-day lives. In the age of artificial intelligence and virtual reality, this is one more step towards technology’s seamless integration into human life.

Voice Search As A Marketer

Early research based on Cortana and Windows 10 shows that, initially, shorter search queries offered better results for both text and voice searches. However, younger generations show long-tail, highly-specific search queries via voice search that parallel their natural speech patterns.

This leads researchers to believe that marketers will have to evolve in order to optimize their content for text queries and for voice searches. The long-tail keywords that often get ruled out when determining the high volume keywords are becoming important again.

In addition to complete sentences, questions are also being factored back into the equation. When typing in computer language, we avoid question marks or even questioning phrases, however, asking questions is more natural to a voice searcher.

Stronger Intent, More Specific Results

As noted with younger consumers using more specific search queries, the intention of all voice searchers are more direct than that of text searchers. The question phrases that are used provide a distinction in what kind of search a user is trying to execute. The fragmented thought of “tennis shoes” that may be used in a text query will include more direction in a voice search, dictating whether the searcher wanted new shoes, to sell shoes, to have their tennis shoes repaired, or something else entirely.

Local Matters

As voice searching becomes more common, the local optimization becomes more important than ever. Voice search is 3 times more likely to require a local result than a text search. Not only that, but voice search is also more likely to result in an immediate decision. Maximizing your local optimization will help drive you to the top of the voice search results pages.

Technology will continue to evolve and it will become more common to interact with various inanimate objects verbally, so we as marketers have to adapt. We are no longer optimizing our digital assets for text search only. We must consider how consumers are finding us, and change our strategies to meet those efforts.

As marketers, we are constantly evaluating and improving our tactics to ensure the best results for our clients. In a world that has very rapidly become digital-centric, this is a daily (and sometimes hourly) task, especially for those working towards local search optimization. One of the biggest influencers in a digital marketing strategy is Google.

Optimizing For Search

A leader in just about everything they do, success in reaching consumers is at the will of the marketer who understands the regular algorithm updates and responds appropriately. Sounds easy enough, right? Wrong. As a platform that rolls out multiple new updates every day, Google is not making announcements to the public or marketing professionals that say, “Hey! This is new, adjust accordingly.” If you are not keeping up with the changes, your digital assets can very quickly be left behind.

Google has always filtered their search engine results pages (SERPs). Ultimately, this is for the benefit of both businesses and consumers. A SERP that is filled with the sub-pages of a single business website offers minimal benefit to everyone but that business. Google’s goal is to produce a filtered list with a variety of highly related content for each query in the search box. While impressive and improving, the capabilities of creating this list is far from perfect.

Local Search Is Its Own Beast

Local search results seem to be one of the more difficult aspects of ranking to tackle. With city limit requirements and a smaller playing field, the competition grows exponentially. The Possum update, which rolled out a little over a year ago, had a major impact on local search results. It is believed that the goal of this update was to diversify local search results to include more local businesses, but, in fact, the results were quite the opposite.

This update worked very similarly to an organic filter, showing the most relevant options to a search query and filtering out those that were too similar. What this meant, though, was that business that shared an address, domain, phone number, parent company, or was even located physically near one another were no longer showing up in search queries they previously ranked highly for. A doctor’s office that had a page for each of their three practicing doctors and the practice itself would not show four unique search results.

What’s New In Local Search?

In late August, a new update took effect. The Hawk update, cleverly named because hawks eat possums, made changes to the proximity filter that was causing physically close businesses in the same industry to be filtered out of search results. It is not a perfect fix, as competitors that share a street address are still finding themselves filtered out of SERPs, but the distance filter has certainly been tightened.

For the businesses that are still affected as a result of the possum update, all hope is not lost. Neither is their ranking. When you zoom into a Google map results page, the filters are removed and all of the listings are shown. In order to get into those top rankings, though, the businesses need to evaluate their SEO strategies to ensure that they are providing the most relevant content to specific queries.

Meet Our Newest Client

Optimum Networking offers business-driven IT solutions. Built on the foundation of understanding technological needs from a business perspective, Optimum Networking is the ideal solution for any company that is seeking customized IT solutions to streamline efficiency and productivity.

For Optimum Networking, though, it is not just about the installation. They take great pride in being a trusted advisor for their partners and offering consistent technical support – before issues ever become a problem! The first priority when working with Optimum Networking is successful technological solutions for your company that decrease costs and hassle.

Website and Logo Overhaul

Recently, Optimum Networking contracted out the creative work for their website and logo. After a complete redesign, making their website user-friendly and their logo unique and striking, they decided it was time to team up with an agency that could take their product and run with it. That is where we came in.

Search Engine Optimization

All the hard work of a new website is for nothing if there is no one coming to see it. FiG will be working with their front-end content and back-end coding to optimize the Optimum Networking website and drive the right traffic to the quintessential IT solution provider through search engine results.

Content Creation and Management

As the cliche goes, “Content is king.” In the constantly evolving industry of technology, it is important for Optimum Networking to stay on top of all the new trends. The brand’s blog is the perfect place to let consumers know that Optimum Networking is at the forefront of the changes in technology. FiG will be working with their content producers to keep fresh content on their website for consumers and search engines alike.

We are so excited to partner with Optimum Networking to fulfill their marketing needs. Stay tuned for the results!

Check out our client successes here. Want to be the next “fig” thing? Contact us to schedule a meeting and learn what FiG Advertising + Marketing can do for your brand.